Page 132 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

128 WISOONSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.

After another hundred years, the country was entered by s
rude tribe called Chichemecs, from the regions of the far north-
west. They were soon folloaed by other tribes of higher
civilization, supposed to have been of the same original stock
with the Toltecs, as their language was nearly the same. The
most prominent of these were the Aztecs of the conquest, and
the Tecucans. The latter adopted the Toltec civilization and
communicated it to the Chichemecs and the several tribes mere
incorporated into the Mexican empire. The Aztecs came to
the valley about the beginning of the 13th century and founded
the City of Mexico in 1325."
The Aztecs had also a distinct tradition of a remarkable per-
sonage having mysteriously appeared among them, with white
skin, long dark hair and flowing beard, and who instructed them
in the use of metals, in agriculture, and the art of goverpment,
and suddenly disappeared, assuring them that others of his race
would soon visit them and instruct them still further. This
Quetzalcoatl, as they called him, being a single individual of
another race so different from, and superior to any known to
them, they regarded as a god, and their traditionary descriptions
of his person, led them to regard the Spaniards as of the same
race, and Montezuma to claim relationship to the Spanish mon-
arch. They had also deified tt hero of another and white race,?
and of superior civilization in the art of war; and to, account
for his appearance among them, they very naturally ascribed to.
,him a miraculous incarnation. The tradition of the appear-
ance, from time to time, of remarkable personages, so different
in appearance, and so superior in knowledge to the races among
,whom their lot was cast, should not be regarded as mere Indian
myths, as we shall see in the sequel.
In the religious rites and sentiments of the Aztecs, there was
strange, confused mixture of Christian rites and ethics, with
savage cruelties and heathenish abominations. Mr. PRESCOTT
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* Preecottls Conquests of Mexico: vol. 1, chap. 1.
t Huitzil~patchli.